Growing Up
by E. C. Peters
Summary: A very sweet and truthful essayfic a friend wrote for my birthday...


**I didn't write this awesome piece, my good friend Simetra presented this to me on my 20th birthday. hugs Thank you so much sweetie! **

**I hope you all enjoy.**

I don't know who's perspective this is from… maybe it's mine… or yours… or Lucy's, but it doesn't really fit her… I like to think of it as Susan, but obviously some things would need tweaking then… So it's your decision. I hope you like it.

**Growing Up**

_Dedicated to my dear Emmy._

"Dearest," said Aslan very gently, "you and your brother will never come back to Narnia…. You are too old, children," said Aslan, "and you must begin to come close to your own world now."

The words came to me as I watched the softly illuminated clouds drift across the sky. That was the thing about clouds. One minute you thought you saw something in them, a jousting knight, or a prowling leopard, and then you looked away, and the images shifted, and when you looked back, you had to search through the miasma again for what you had seen. And you would find that it had disappeared, wiped away by the intangible breath we call wind. Or, if you really concentrated, you might find your picture again, but it would be distorted, mutated, and never again that same perfect fleeting image. Passed away.

I had looked away from my childhood for one moment it seemed, and suddenly it was gone, or if not gone, perfectly unrecognizable. And where to go now? The fairyland of my youth, the Neverland I had grasped at for so long was finally cut off from reach. I was 20. There was no denying it. I was no longer a child. Oh, certainly, there were all the words about being a child at heart, and growing old but not growing up, but really, honestly, you faced a new world when you reached adulthood. It was a harsher world. It was a real world. I was expected to behave a certain way, and whether I still felt a child or not, it was a child trapped inside the body of a responsible adult, expected to handle this dangerous world, though many others of the same title had failed. I would not be returning to Narnia. It was time for me to find God in the real world, now, where good and evil were not visibly manifested in witches and Lions, where there was no author to assure me that my future was secure.

A few clouds passed, intertwined and parted. The wind that blew them stirred my hair, breathed across my face. It was warm, and soft. The clouds swirled into new acquaintance, and form new shapes in a seeming dances before disappearing once again into the miasma.

The breath was comforting. And in it, I remembered something. There was an Author… and there was a Lion. Perhaps not always so understandable… but far wiser too. My future might seem unclear to me, but was it not much easier than the ambiguity of Mary's story, which He wrote so well? My new obstacles might seem insurmountable for ME, but were they not much lesser than the obstacles of the many who had been protected by the Lion of Judah? Had I such little faith, then, to think that He who guided them could not guide me?

Though I had often professed the idea that trust was my greatest ally, it seemed clear to me that I had not discerned its truth five minutes before casting it aside and trusting my own self to forge my path. In a childhood world, where I was guided by adults and mentors, it was easy enough to say this. Forging my own path meant fixing my lunch, choosing when I went to bed, and who my friends were. Forging my own path meant applying to a college of my choice, getting homework done on time, choosing to learn about what interested me. Now I realized that by choosing to forge my own path, I had chosen to decide how I affected others, how I affected the world. That was a tall order to put on one's self. I knew that a personal relationship with God was the greatest gift I could give a person… but it was that very thinking that was my mistake. _I_ give that gift? How could I? How could I give God to the world, who had given the world to me? If I did not trust the Great Author to develop my character, and guide my path to the destiny he had set for me, to affect the lives he had meant for me to affect, how could I expect to affect any lives in his name?

My future was unpredictable and frightening. But was it not more frightening in my inexperience then in his skilled hands? Not more in control in the hands of one who could see the whole blueprint, then the hands of one who couldn't see halfway across one room?

I would have to come close to my own world now. But… not alone. And here, perhaps, I would know Him better.

The breeze stirred the grasses around me again, and I watched it shift the clouds once again. A blossom of white in the blue expanse above slowly dissolved into mist. The mist was very beautiful.


End file.
